10 • The Great Plaguetheir loss of power, and a ban on all worship except at Anglican services
made all dissenters—from moderate Puritan Presbyterians to radical Quak-
ers—potential threats to church and crown. No one knew how the capital
and country would hold together against a destabilizing force like plague.
England had experienced sixteen plague visitations in the sixteenth and
seventeenth centuries before this last one in 1665. The capital was especially
susceptible, and popular almanacs included the “Great Plagues of London”
in their chronology of memorable events since the Creation and Flood. A
statistical study by the leading modern historian of plague in sixteenth- and
seventeenth-century England, Paul Slack, offers comparisons (table 1 ).^23
Of the seven “great” epidemics in London, the one in 1665 was by far the
greatest in plague casualties and total fatalities, two times the comparable
Table 1.Major Plague Epidemics in London, 1563–1665Number of Burials
Index of Mortality
Plague Relative Estimated (as % of
Year Total Burials Mortality* Population Population)
City of London and its liberties
1563 20,372 17,404 7.70 85,000 24.0
1578 7,830 3,568 2.29 101,000 7.8
1593 17,893 10,675 4.25 125,000 14.3
1603 31,861 23,045 6.74 141,000 22.6
1625 41,312 26,350 6.18 206,000 20.1
City of London and its liberties, plus some outparishes
1636 23,359 10,400 2.25 313,000 7.5
1665 † 80,696† 55,797† 5.41 459,000† 17.6†
source:Slack,The Impact of Plague,151 (table 6.1).
- The index of relative mortality is an expression of mortality in a crisis year as compared to normal
mortality. As Paul Slack cautions, these figures are very tentative because of the assumptions built
into estimating “normal” rates of mortality and London’s population.
†The figures in this table for 1665 are incomplete. Corrected totals were 97,306 (all burials) and
68,598 (plague burials). The rate of mortality, based on an adjusted population of 500,000, should
be 19%.